The “experiential experience?” Really, Boston Globe?
There is awesome writing. There is just okay writing that does the job. And then there is writing that makes you stop and say, “What in hell is going on here?”
In an article about what’s to become of the venerable Boston tourist trap that is the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston Globe writer Dana Gerber included this comment from the marketplace’s former leader:
Joseph O’Malley, who oversaw the marketplace as general manager from 2016 until 2022, also blames the all-but-empty events calendar. “The experiential experience would bring locals there,” he said. “Right now, there’s nothing.”
“Experiential experience?” Really? You’re just going to lay down those words and expect us to accept them?
Filter your cringe
Okay, I get it. The “experiential experience” is, I suppose, the set of notable experiences that could happen at a location like this that would make you want to come and visit.
But if Mr. O’Malley really talks like that, it’s no wonder Bostonians are having trouble relating to Faneuil Hall. Surely we can find a better way to describe it. Like, say, “calendar of notable or entertaining events.” Say what you mean, people.
I hold the writer Dana Gerber guilty as well. If a person in authority says something absurd, you have two choices. You can point out the absurdity and use it to show the person is out of touch. Or you can just not quote it, if you feel the absurdity distracts from the point you’re trying to make.
What you can’t do is just put it in print like it’s normal now, and you’ve accepted it as a natural idiom of the English language.
That’s my take on the languagification of language, and I’m sticking to it.
I know one business writer who is probably kicking himself for not coining this phrase.
I have a feeling I know who you mean.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility the reporter used the quote specifically to make a point about the imagination, vision, and capabilities of the people who now are running the place …
That’s a very subtle and sneaky way to send a message. It would be subtext that’s not even hinted at in the text.
Will you add in a screed about the nounification of verbs? Using orientating rather than orienting?
I won’t be commentating on that right now.
Down with redundant redundancy!
O’Malley should have spent more time ideating his idea.
To your point about not quoting someone if their language is distracting:
I am the editor of a newsletter for the Prison Mathematics Project. I sometimes receive letters I’d like to publish because the content is worthy, but the writer is illiterate. I’d like to know to what extent I can “fix” that language.
I’m curious, Claire: What is the Prison Mathematics Project?
I’d write back to them and say “I think it might sound better if we write it like this. Is that ok with you?”
I live residentially close to Boston. Maybe I’ll attend those eventful events myself, to find out if they truly are experiential experiences.
I happen to be quite experienced with experiential experiences, especially existential ones that can only exponentially experienced experimentally. By experts.
As my old friend Jimi used to say, “Have you ever been experienced?” Now that dude was experiential!